Economic benefits:
1. Removes or greatly reduce the need or cost for individual hurricane and weather insurance
2. Shifts the costs for air conditioning and temperature control of buildings
3. Reduces/shifts environmental damage from structures under the dome to the dome

If we rethink and retrofit how we climate control cities, it could turn out to make more sense than climate control for all the buildings inside the city.

For such dome cities all vehicles under the dome should be zero emission and electrically powered.

The Eden Project is a visitor attraction in the United Kingdom, including the world’s largest greenhouse. Inside the artificial biomes are plants that are collected from all around the world.

Sir Robert McAlpine and Alfred McAlpine constructed the Eden Project and MERO designed and built the biomes. The project took 2½ years to construct and opened to the public on 17 March 2001. It is made of steel and thermoplastic

The Rainforest Biome, which is the largest greenhouse in the world, covers 1.559 hectares (3.9 acres) and measures 180 feet (55 m) high, 328 feet (100 m) wide and 656 feet (200 m) long. It is used for tropical plants, such as fruiting banana trees, coffee, rubber and giant bamboo, and is kept at a tropical temperature.

The biomes are constructed from a tubular steel space-frame (hex-tri-hex) with mostly hexagonal external cladding panels made from the thermoplastic ETFE. Glass was avoided due to its weight and potential dangers. The cladding panels themselves are created from several layers of thin UV-transparent ETFE film, which are sealed around their perimeter and inflated to create a large cushion.

Eden Project has received £130 million of funding from various sources.

Eden’s designers decided not to use these traditional materials in their greenhouses — they went with glazed ethyl tetra fluoro ethylene (ETFE) foil instead. ETFE foil is a perfect covering for a greenhouse because it is strong, transparent and lightweight. A piece of ETFE weighs less than 1 percent of a piece of glass with the same volume. It is also a better insulator than glass, and it is much more resistant to the weathering effects of sunlight

More technical details:
– The dome can be made of Texlon ETFE which can protect the city from 180 MPH winds, water and fire.
– Houston dome area would be over 21 Million square feet.
– Houston Dome’s broadest panels will be 15 feet across. It will take 147,000 panels to cover the city of Houston